Brewers hire Macha

This team just needs a steady hand. If the Brewers are looking for someone to come in and kick guys' asses, I think they're making a mistake.

 

Yep. But I'll take it over Ned "I'm the smartest man in baseball ... how dare you question anything I do?" Yost.

 

That's wrong, Tony LaRussa is the smartest man in baseball - just ask him.

 

Or read his book.

 

How would he do that? And why?

 

There were some legitimate beefs by players against Macha but mostly he got fired because Billy didn't get along with him.

Billy made sure that whatever problems the players had with Macha were public before he canned him.

I think players knew Macha didn't have backing from Billy.

 

I think they needed to hire Garth Iorg. He was MONEY the last few weeks of the season as third-base windmill...I mean coach

 

Players vs. Macha is outlined here by Susan Slusser:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/17/SPG4ULQPA71.DTL

 

Susan had actually been writing a lot of that stuff in the days BEFORE Macha was fired. The general consensus among those around the club was that Billy encouraged players to publicly be critical of Macha so he could have an excuse to fire him.

Quotes today from Mark Kotsay and Jason Kendall both indicated "that stuff was overblown" in Oakland.

It's interesting that here in the Bay Area the Giants players said all of the same things about Felipe Alou after 2003 season (when the Giants won 100 games). He didn't communicate, didn't protect the players, yada yada yada. Brian Sabean, however, got along great with Alou and basically told the players: "He's not here to babysit you. All I care about is the results, and he got good results, so deal with it."

Had Beane felt about Macha the way Sabean felt about Alou, Macha would not have been fired IMO.

 

Why would Beane need an excuse? He's very assertive and he's not in a situation where it was ever a "him or me" proposition. He also allowed Macha to leave the year before and didn't stand in Art Howe's way when the Mets wanted him.

And since when do players take orders from the GM to undermine a manager? That's bizarre.

Regarding the Kotsay/Kendall quotes: Of course it was all just a media creation.

Except Susan Slusser doesn't sensationalize and it appears there was a widespread problem, given the number of players willing to address the subject.

 

Always. Funny.

 

Hey all - just a quick note to say that I had been hearing those kinds of things from players for weeks (or more) at that point, but no one wanted to go on the record until after the playoffs were over. There's no way Beane orchestrated that weeks or months before - especially not with the personalities involved. And there were several other players who had been critical of Macha during those weeks (some of them pretty high profile) who would not go on the record after the fact. It was a substantial number, all told.

That said, many of those players have since made their peace with Macha, and I think everyone who was around the team that year including Macha, the front office and the media, would agree that it was just a bad fit that season. Macha had said he was going to pursue other jobs the winter before and the A's launched a manager search; when Macha didn't find something else, Beane decided to bring him back, but it just didn't work the second time around. It all seemed uncomfortable all year, and that sort of permeated everything.

Beane and Macha were not a good match, that part is true, but Beane didn't try to get people to slam Macha when he was fired, and Beane never blasted Macha, either.

For what it's worth, I thought Macha was a good manager in terms of on-field work and I think he learned a ton with those experiences in Oakland. I'm very interested to see how he'll do with a hands-off GM and with some good talent, especially if they can scrounge up any pitching. It would be nice to see how he operates when given free rein.

Not every player was anti-Macha, to be fair. I remember Jay Payton strongly defended him (his comments were supposed to be included in a pull-out quote section that ran with my story and they were not, which he was upset about, rightfully so). And I was just talking to Huston Street today and he mentioned that he had really liked playing for Macha.